


The Fierceness of Charity (A Vignette)

by janearts



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 23:06:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14030826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janearts/pseuds/janearts
Summary: For his crimes, Morowa Trevelyan has given Samson to Bree Amell, Hero of Ferelden and Advisor to the Inquisition, so that he might yet find redemption for his actions. Since his sentencing, the prisoner and his handler have become increasingly amiable and Cullen feels it is his duty to remind the advisor of hers.





	The Fierceness of Charity (A Vignette)

‘He is your _charge_ , Bree,’ he said, exasperated. He had tried to broach the subject gingerly, but he was losing patience the more and more Bree feigned innocence and ignorance. ‘It’s… inappropriate.’

‘What is?’

Never one to be able to sit still, her voice came from the direction of his bookshelves where she was poring over his collection. She had turned her head to look over her shoulder at him. Her eyebrows were raised, as if she couldn’t possibly guess to what he was referring.

‘You’ve become…’ Cullen rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand as Bree turned her attention back to the bookshelf, pulling a book down to examine it. ‘…close to him.’

She turned a page idly, more interested in the book than in the conversation.

‘He’s my charge; naturally I’d be close to him.’

‘At the hip?’

It was a snide retort and Bree was taken aback by it. The Cullen she knew had been mild-mannered and soft-spoken; any wry remarks had been reserved for others, never darted at her. Unused to being his target, she was both unprepared for and slow to conceal that his words had had any clout in the first place. It was a mercy her back was turned to him.

She coolly returned the book back to its proper home on the shelf and turned to face him, hands clasped primly in front of her. _Now_ he had her undivided attention.

‘He is a decent man, Cullen, as you yourself told me. I happen to enjoy his company.’

‘I said I thought he was a decent man at first,’ he corrected.

‘I believe he’s always been a decent man,’ she said airily, as if she was a better judge of character than he.

‘ _Maker_ , Bree, he’s not a decent man. He’s a criminal! He helped poison the Order. He corrupted his own men, turned them into monsters. The Red Templars have sown red lyrium across two nations, maybe more. They caused the destruction of Haven. Of my soldiers! Have you forgotten all that?’

‘If we would that the Maker forgive us our sins, we should also forgive the sins that have been committed against us.’

He had been ready for this answer. It was so typical of Bree to use others’ words in lieu of her own. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling some letters from a desk drawer and handing them to her, ‘The Red Templars have bought and stolen people, made slaves or monsters out of them. Can you forgive him this sin?’

He eyed her critically as she read, watched her frown, watched her wrestle with her warring emotions. In the hopes that he could turn the tide of war in his favour, he said:

‘Sin is when you think of other people as things.’

Where Bree quoted Chantry writings, Cullen quoted her. It was a taste of her own medicine. Her head jerked up from the letters and he continued, undaunted.

‘Is that not what you once told me?’ All those years ago, in a little room…

‘Yes,’ she admitted, but there was an air of defiance about her, like that of a heretic who would not recant even as the pyre burned around her. ‘That is sin.’ She spoke the words like a decree.

She placed the letters on his desk with conscious temperance and looked up to meet Cullen’s gaze. Bree was a heretic who burned from the inside _out_.

‘Love not in the man his error, but the man: for the man the Maker made, the error the man himself made. Let charity be fervent to amend—love the man and out of love, amend his error.’

Cullen frowned. He thought the letters would be enough to sway her, but leave it to Bree to take holy words and twist them to suit herself. Her cousin had the same gift with words, but at least Hawke had been barefaced in his depravity—that honesty at least he could respect. _This_  descendant of the Amells took everything and made it sound righteous. He couldn’t help but sneer.

‘Had I your tongue that I could mince matters with pretty words.’

‘If you had my tongue you would not have said such cruel things to a man who was once your brother in arms!’ she snapped back with uncharacteristic viciousness.

‘What Samson did was inexcusable! Unforgivable!’

‘That which forgives is none other than charity. Take away charity from the heart and hatred possesses it, it knows not how to forgive.’

She broke momentarily from her breathless citation to cock her head to one side. ‘What possesses your heart, Cullen, that you would mark Samson so unworthy of your forgiveness? What beats in your breast?’

She pulled away from the desk as if to leave him with that thought, convinced she had won the upper hand and claimed the higher ground. As she opened the door, slowly so as to show she was not fleeing so much as leaving of her own accord, she turned to look at him and, to give the final blow, quoted:

‘Let charity be there. Let her fearlessly forgive, not being straitened.’

Maybe it was his skill as a former Templar, maybe it was from all his time spent around the Seekers, maybe it was because he knew her well enough from their shared time at Ferelden's Circle, but perhaps, just perhaps, it was due to his skill at chess that prompted Cullen to ask the question that would have put Bree’s metaphorical king into checkmate:

‘Did you forgive Uldred?’

She regarded him so that he could see in her eyes what sort of knife he had driven.

‘ _I never got the chance_ ,’ she snarled and Cullen could hear the anguish in her words. There was a wound there that the healer in her could not mend,  _would not_ mend. The slam of the door at her departure betrayed both her bitterness and her hypocrisy, for the fierceness of charity is fierceness without gall.


End file.
